


all I need, darling, is a life in your shape (I picture it, soft, and I ache)

by Ella Symphony (LaurenX)



Series: we're believing in a future we can't see [1]
Category: Given (Anime), Given (Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I mean they're like 18 or 19 at this point, I'm Bad At Tagging, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Depression, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, Living Together, OT3, Polyamory, Rarepair, Shizu picked up photography as a hobby, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings, but in Japan that's still under the drinking age sooooo, i think, it's really just Shizu being gay and soft, there, this is important to the sliver of plot we have here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:07:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25356733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaurenX/pseuds/Ella%20Symphony
Summary: They're vibrant and out of this world, like a collapsing star, and yet they're so gentle, so simple, even with their roughened hands.(Or, the one where Shizu marvels at the magic found in the ordinary, wonders about hope and promises and beauty, and maybe comes alive along the way.)
Relationships: Kashima Hiiragi/Uenoyama Ritsuka, Kashima Hiiragi/Yagi Shizusumi, Kashima Hiiragi/Yagi Shizusumi/Uenoyama Ritsuka, Past Satou Mafuyu/Uenoyama Ritsuka, Yagi Shizusumi/Uenoyama Ritsuka
Series: we're believing in a future we can't see [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1836307
Comments: 20
Kudos: 41





	all I need, darling, is a life in your shape (I picture it, soft, and I ache)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Mitski's "Strawberry Blond." I wrote this without any intentions of publishing, but two friends convinced me it was good, so here I go lol  
> Shoutout to the amazing yucatanmafia for betaing this thing! You're the best! Go check him out y'all  
> This all takes place about a year and a half after they graduate from high school, in an AU I created in my head. I might write more of it if you guys like this one

It's earlier than it should be. The light is pouring through the window like any photographer's wet dream, even his own, though he hardly deserves the title for a hobby. 

Shizusumi's in love with the art piece no one will ever understand like him.

Their apartment is open, modern, bright. It's mundane in the best of ways but sometimes it feels borderline ethereal, in these small pockets in time, these soft moments they hold onto so tightly before letting them go accordingly. The sun is rising, dyeing the sky peach and lavender and a peculiar sort of nebulous white that will fade to the softest powder blue in due time. 

And through it all, the sun beams pour in through the enormous window that sits over the side of their bed.  It's a king size, bought back when they were still tip-toeing around Uenoyama and tripping over themselves in their hesitant, clumsy attempts to get to hold him, too, broken heart and all. It'd been a gesture filled with hope, a dream held in a sturdy frame made of lovely olive wood and pale, golden steel. They'd tucked it into the corner of the mezzanine, installing a library in place of the headboard and filling it with sheet music, records, framed pictures, worn notebooks, pretty boxes filled with demos and trinkets and memories.

Eventually, some of Uenoyama's most prized records were placed in there, too, along with Shizu's beloved camera and his growing photo albums, which sat besides the ones they were making together. There was a picture of their first live, all of them arguing but excited, and of the live with Yuki's song, where all of them looked melancholy and helpless and happy and just a bit lost. One with Mafuyu, too, where Hiiragi was hanging half on top of him and half on top of Mafuyu with a blinding grin, both Shizu and their quiet friend smiling more sedately. And then there was one of their comeback, after Uenoyama got his feet under him and changed in fifty-one different ways that in no way changed his heart, after he finally started talking with his old band again and looking less like he would never recover. He dyed his hair, changed the way he dressed, let Hiiragi use him as a model for all the crazy things he got up to when someone put makeup on his hands, and he seemed happier for all of it.

Uenoyama was smiling almost as brightly as Hiiragi in the picture, standing between Shizu and him and arms thrown over both their shoulders. Hiiragi was making a peace sign, face scrunched together in a brilliant beam, and Shizu was smiling softly, content. It had been a good day.

Today was a good day, too, though he had started it much earlier than planned. Yesterday, they'd had a grueling live, followed by a long series of fan meetings and then a house party they were invited to. Booze, dancing, more singing and getting roped into more than a few drinking games—they all stumbled up the stairs to their bed at around 3:00 AM, and they should have been rightfully dead to the world until noon, at least. And yet here Shizu was, wide awake and propped up on his elbow, resting his head on his knuckles and observing the scene entangled in the sheets.

Sometimes the comfort was too much, and something cold settled on his skin, kissed him with cyanide and tongue. Reminded him of cold, cold days that all started with soft sheets and ended with harsh fists, with faux smiles dripping with the hurt about to be inflicted upon him. It rattled his bones, froze the marrow in them and it chased away sleep more effectively than any amount of caffeine, no matter how unholy, could. It's one of those nights, one of those days, one of those _moments,_ and it's okay. He breathes, rubs his eyes, stretches. Reminds himself he's fine, he's warm and he's not alone. Twists and _sees._

He breathes and he smiles, probably. 

Hiiragi was like a cat, stretched in odd, extremely concerning positions that no human being should be able to produce, spine curved and one arm hanging off the bed. He was curled around the foot of the bed, one leg tucked close to his chest and the other stretched as far as it would go, under one of Uenoyama's legs and over the other, foot resting on Shizu's ankle. His torso was angled toward Uenoyama, head almost resting in his hip, the arm currently actually on the bed sprawled over the back of Uenoyama's bare, pale thighs. 

His hair was a soft, messy halo of golden tainted by black, gold scorched and burnt, resting over the white sheets like a dandelion. Hiiragi's lips were parted, lip gloss still sticking to his lips and halfway smeared over his chin and under his nose, cheeks rosy and eyeliner perfectly untouched, the sharp line of gold glitter over it slightly worse for wear. He was only wearing the shirt he had borrowed from Shizu yesterday: a white button up, which had been one or two sizes too big on him, but which had looked flawless on him nevertheless because Hiiragi could make a wet paper bag look good. Right now, Shizu stood by his statement. The shirt was fully unbuttoned, hanging off one shoulder and showing off sinful collar-bones, pale, airy fabric reaching the back of his thighs effortlessly and hanging off one his hands almost comically. He was the picture of an angel who'd danced with sin a little too much, a beautiful dichotomy of debauchery and the easy warmth and softness of summer. He was so lovely.

He snapped a picture from the foot of the bed, where the light spilled onto Hiiragi's face just right, casting the slightest shadow and blinding just the right amount, making it ethereal and mundane because he was wearing one knee-high sock which was askew, the other absent and nowhere to be found. The sheets were tangled on the floor and his black pants were hanging off the corner of the bed, along with Uenoyama's sweater. The shelves were cluttered, a bit dusty, and behind Hiiragi on the space of the bed he'd left unused was a leather choker that belonged to Uenoyama, peeking out of Shizu’s discarded clothes. It was a disaster, it was disorganized, it was so _ordinary_ —and it was human and spectacular and it was a moment he could never recreate, could never put into words.

He snapped the shot, careful and sure, and then his breath caught in his throat as his eyes focused on his other lover. Shizu really was the luckiest man alive, rotten childhood aside. 

He'd fucked an angel and now he was also fucking a fallen angel, a soft-hearted demon, and he loved them with all the ferocity his shattered, withered heart could muster.

Uenoyama with laying face down on the bed, head turned on the pillow and hair smudged on the white and grey stripes. He'd gone back to blue, tired of the odd mix of magenta and purple he had going on. He hadn't surrendered the metallic quality to it, hadn't changed the fact that every time his head turned it was a different shade of navy and the depths of the ocean. Midnight blue, metallic and like glitter and star dust, and as the sunlight pours in through the window his body is angled toward, it turns his head into a beautiful, twinkling disaster of soft, thick strands standing every which way. 

The guitarist loved that window. It was embedded into the wall, leaving a frame big enough to sit on or decorate. He did both. There were potted plants, small and medium, and there were flowers, which they barely kept alive, and there was also his growing collection of nail polish, all dark and holographic and metallic and glittery, and then there were empty, unwashed mugs, dirty laundry, a notebook, and a ruined newspaper. His headphones were there, as was a beautiful glass fish tank that held more than two dozen picks, because Hiiragi and him kept losing them. But then there was a small, velvet box, like the ones where people put jewelry or rings before handing them out. It was closed but Shizu knew that, inside, there were two picks: black and white, with "Damn Princess" and "Shittyyama" written messily on them with neon yellow and electric blue Sharpie, and then there was also an earring shaped like a camera, one that he'd eventually wear, after he pierced his ear. It was their box of promises.

Promises. Their bed was one, and now Uenoyama was sprawled over it with his arms folded under his head, naked as the day he was born and glittering with sweat, making his skin sparkle gold. He was a bit tan these days, though he'd been pale for a long time—he was still fair-skinned, still bruised easily under Shizu's mouth and Hiiragi's fingertips, but it was  _different_ —and it made the defined, corded muscle on his back stand out more. It wasn't anything outstanding but it was there, in his sharp collar bones and his wide shoulders and his biceps and his hips. Shizu could see chipped inky purple nail polish on two fingers, the rest hidden in a loose fist, and he could see smudged eyeliner that approached a smokey-eye, dark blue sparkling over the blurry line of black. Uenoyama's face, unlike Hiiragi's, was pale and his lips were dry and swollen, since he lasted longer than Hiiragi before passing out. They had lost themselves in each other for a while, exhaustion pushed aside, and then the guitarist had kissed Shizu in the same way he played his guitar until Shizu himself passed out, Uenoyama almost always the last one to cave when it was actually time to sleep.

The light filtering through, pale and white in the dusty, gentle room made his cheekbones stand out like the whole world was covered in film. His breaths made a stubborn lock of hair fall in and out of his face, his shoulders rise and fall softly, a scar on the edge of his shoulder-blade from that one time he and Hiiragi decided jumping out a window sounded like a fine idea. Hiiragi has them, too, under the striking white of the shirt and Uenoyama has more, he knows, on his forearms and his ankle and in the hollow of his throat, hidden under Hiiragi and the pillows and himself, but they're all pale white and like lines of silver against his skin. Like he's porcelain, cracked in some spots, and instead of gold, he fixed himself with silver. 

Uenoyama looks less like an angel and a debauched work of art and more like an ideal, like a character in some melancholy, bittersweet book about how life goes on somewhere. He looks more like he drank the night away, more like he's danced enough his feet must ache, looks like he's been in a club and he's been taken home various times before. Uenoyama, in short, looks like a filthy dream and a brittle fantasy all in one, and to Shizu, he looks like the reality behind a dream come true, like the truth rather than the illusion, and he falls in love a little with the crudeness of it all.

He takes the picture from besides the bed, taking the picture from the side instead of the foot of the bed. He can see the shelves, can see the windows and the little ring velvet box and he can see the rest of Uenoyama's missing clothes in the corner and he can see half of Hiiragi's arm over the back of his lover's thighs. He can see it all in the picture, dust particles like glitter in the light hanging in the air and hair like Hades's, and he's rough around the edges, and he's not lovely, but he's breathtaking.

Shizu thinks about earrings and picks and rings and velvet boxes and he can hear bells he isn't ready for and yet he  _wants._

He takes a last shot, when Hiiragi twists and turns again like the feline he is, crawling over Uenoyama's legs properly and wrapping his arms around his waist, resting his head on the small of Uenoyama's back and staying there. Uenoyama makes a sound of contentment, twitches, settles back down. They breathe, soft and relaxed and absolutely vulnerable and so, _so_ beautiful. They're vibrant and out of this world, like a collapsing star, and yet they're so gentle, so _simple,_ even with their roughened hands. 

They’re the most dazzling thing he’s ever seen and the most pedestrian sight in the back of his eyelids, and he’s _alive_ and _warm_ for the first time in his life. 

Shizu feels infinite, he realizes, because this pale moment of vibrant light is, and he'll keep it forever.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you guys liked it! Leave a comment, don't be a stranger :)  
> Also I never outright state it but in this AU Uenoyama left Given and moved away after a very debilitating breakup with Mafuyu, and joined Hiiragi's band.


End file.
